Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberté spent 11 days at the International Space Station in 2009, taking photos of our planet with a Nikon D3X camera. And now he's got an exhibition opening at the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan, featuring 40 of his best space photos.

When you're flying up there, you have those moments where you're looking at space, at the infinite, and you see that fragile planet, you see that little tiny layers protect it from the void, from darkness, from immense number of stars. And you start to feel a little worried about this planet that looks so fragile in this universe. You know there's life somewhere. We cannot be alone. But so far the human species has not yet achieved the challenge of finding other life or another place where we could live ... you start to tell yourself, well maybe we're just another species passing by. You start to hope that we will start organizing to survive on this planet longer than we would if we don't take care of it.